The Role of the Museum in Experiencing Community

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze selected aspects of the importance of the museum in the perception and experience of community (especially European) in the face of contemporary changes in museum institutions. It refers to the concept of a common world as understood by Hannah Arendt, and the concept of community, e.g. as defined by Thomas Stearns Eliot, and to the social and cultural roles of museums understood as heterotopias in the writings of Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk. The considerations will focus on the issue of “diversity in unity,” and the question of how to maintain it when confronted with vastness and multiplicity in the perspective of infinitely-accumulating goods.